Not This Time
by hansprinsessa
Summary: A rewrite of the S6 episode when Nora tells Pam that Eric loves her and is proud of her...because that shouldn't come from Nora, right? One Shot, Paric AU Nora.


**A/N: So I found this mostly finished fic on my computer today and decided to finish it out. I started writing it after the whole "Eric loves you, you know" Nora/Pam scene, because goddammit, ERIC SHOULD HAVE TOLD HER THAT. I can't remember which episode number that was, but obviously this is an alternate to that episode, and doesn't take into account anything that happened thereafter. Dedicated to Melissa (headfilledwithbirds) because she's been begging me to put a certain line into a fic for about 84 years :D Enjoy.**

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Vampires weren't supposed to feel tired. But Eric Northman had never felt so exhausted in his long life.

He runs his hand down his face, leaning back in his desk chair, trying to enjoy the first moment of silence he had gotten in what seemed like years.

He had left the bickering women staring after him as he stalked away, feeling like his head was going to explode. It had only been a few years before that his only responsibility was keeping himself and Pam safe. And now, he's somehow ended up with a herd of women's safety in his hands, all of whom seemed to both hate each other and him in equal parts for different reasons.

He was more than ready to let them all fight to the death. At the thought, he smiles softly. He knows who would win. There's only one who he had trained himself.

He was down a few women, at least, leaving Sookie at her home, as well as Jessica with Bill as per her wishes. His goodbye to Sookie felt genuine, and he found that he felt better by having left her behind, in the safety of a house that now belongs to her again. When he told Nora he had loved her in a different life, they were the most truthful words he had uttered in a long time. He _had_ loved her, when he didn't know who he was. When he didn't know who Pam was.

_Pam._

The whole time he stood in Sookie's house, his thoughts were on her. His skin nearly crawled with the way he had treated her, but it was hard to act rationally when he felt positively _irrational. _Fear wasn't an emotion that was well known to him, and he had been, and still was, consumed with it.

She didn't understand. She hadn't seen what he and Sookie had seen. She couldn't understand what it felt like to have _so _many people depending on him, looking to him for answers and for what move to make next. Showing his fear in front of Pam was one thing, but it was too ingrained in who he was to allow it to be seen by Sookie, Jessica, Tara, Jason...even Nora. If he allowed his cracks to show, the fissures between them all would deepen even further. He was used to being in charge, and for now, he needed to keep it that way, even if every cell in his body was screaming it him to take Pam and run.

Instead, he had abandoned her yet again to chase after Sookie. Her progeny ended up shot because of his absence. Better Tara than Pamela, though, he thinks. It's only unfortunate they didn't have more accurate aim.

Just like Godric had spent a millennia instilling in him, he knew a vampire cannot be at the mercy of his emotions. He truly cared for the well being of so few, and at the moment, he was forcing himself to force his sentiments aside for those that he actually cared about. He had to keep his shit together in front of them.

But for now, he is alone, and his shit is _anything _but together.

Too much had changed too fast, and has left his mind reeling, grappling for a handhold as the life he's known for too long slips away. It had just been her and him for so long. And look at them now.

He knew he was staring at Sookie weirdly after he signed over her home, trying to piece it all together. What he had ever seen in her in the first place. What, at the time, made the chase so important. Nothing the human girl could have ever offered him would be worth what he had lost with Pam. And now, he's sure that Sookie was somehow connected to Pam's...procreating.

His child having a progeny of her own was something he hadn't had time to wrap his head around. It was something he never would have allowed if he had been here. But, if he had been with her, he has a feeling it would have never happened in the first place.

His thoughts are interrupted as the door to his office opens and closes, and he forces himself to open one eye, peering up between his fingers to see which of the angry women filling his bar have come calling. And, he can't help but deflate a little when he sees it's Nora, part of him hoping to see Pamela, even if it would no doubt cause a confrontation.

"Brother," she says by way of greeting, her hands still on the doorknob, leaning back against the office door. "The sun is rising."

"I am aware," he answers, sitting back in his chair, pretending to shuffle through the papers the Governor's men left scattered across his desk.

"Your child and her insufferable progeny have gone to ground," she replies, pretending to look at her nails. "You all sure know how to pick them."

"Mind your tongue, sweet sister," he hisses, looking up to see her smile. He knows she meant her words teasingly, but his patience with her jabs at his Pamela is wearing quite thin. "You barely know her."

"Tara?" she asks, cocking her head to the side.

He waves a hand dismissively, indicating he could care less what she says about Tara. Insufferable was quite kind, considering some of the words knocking around in his head for her.

Nora smiles somewhat cruelly. "Oh, our dear Pamela then." Eric merely glares, and Nora continues, "I feel like I know her, you know. You never hesitated to talk my fucking ear off about her on the rare occasion that we spoke over the last century."

Eric smirks, although the expression comes nowhere near to reaching his eyes, and sits up slightly in his chair. His anger at his helplessness is roiling inside him, and he's unconsciously itching for a fight. Nora seems oblivious to his shift in stature as she continues, "Pamela this, Pamela that." She lowers her voice to mock him. "She's special. She's different. So beautiful, so intelligent, so perfect, blah blah fucking blah." She rolls her eyes, crossing her arms across her chest. "I half expected to find little woodland creatures following her around."

"You just missed them," Eric sneers.

Nora's pretty face twists into something different altogether, an expression he can't quite name as she whispers, "I _hated _her. I was so jealous of her. You never spoke of _me_ that way. I was a duty to you. An obligation to our father."

"Yes, well," Eric says, not feeling like arguing with her when she's speaking the truth. He loved Nora, he had sworn to Godric to protect her, but never once in the six hundred years he's known her had he been _in _love with her. Nothing like Pam. Finally, he finishes weakly, "Get over it."

"Oh, I am," she says with a smug smile, "Completely over it. What's there to be jealous about? You treat her like shit."

Eric's on his feet before his brain registers the movement, growling at her, his hands balled into fists at his side. "I _said_ mind your tongue, Nora."

"Have I struck a nerve, dear bother?" Nora responds with a mischievous grin.

"Fuck you," he barks back, "You know _nothing_ about us."

"All I know is what you've told me, Eric," she answers, that maddening grin still painting her delicate features, "And I would have expected to come here and seen you worshiping at her feet. Instead?" She laughs, although her eyes are piercing him in accusation, confusing him. "Well, you know what I've seen. I don't need to rehash it, do I?"

"_No_," he grinds out between gritted teeth, his cold blood boiling. His instinct is to jump her shit, to defend what he has held most dear for a century. But even as he opens his mouth to do so, the words die on his lips.

How can he defend what he's singlehandedly destroyed?

He's put everyone else before her. Broken her implicit trust in him without even offering an explanation. Broken his own promises to always be there for her, leaving her alone to fend for herself. Breaking his promise to keep her safe by threatening her safety himself. Ignored his own words, passed down from Godric to himself, that there is _nothing _more important than the bond they share, broken by the very person who taught them to her.

He spent a thousand years making his maker proud. And now?

"What would Father say?" she asks softly, breaking into his internal thoughts, echoing his own question. His eyes snap to hers, before he looks away, for the first time truly feeling ashamed of his actions.

Before, when he lost his temper, she could feel him. She knew that he still loved her. That no matter how he acted on the outside, she could feel the truth. He's suddenly bowled over with guilt, remembering the look in her eyes as he gave her the cold shoulder earlier in the evening. Her voice shaking as she asked him why he didn't trust her, accused him of lying to her over and over.

"Tara hates you," Nora says quietly.

"Everyone hates me," he mutters petulantly.

"True," she says with a nod, not bothering to deny it. "But how long do you think you have until Tara convinces your Pamela to leave you behind for good?"

"She can't," he whispers, his eyes still averted, stopping short of telling Nora the truth. He _loves _her. She's supposed to be with _him_.

"She can, brother," she says softly, crossing the small office and circling his great desk, leaning one hip on the edge of it. "It's true that I'm not fond of her, no more than she is fond of me. But I know, probably better than most, what she means to you, and running off with that one will get her killed."

He nods. Tara is brave, but she's an idiot. Otherwise she wouldn't have been writhing around on his bar, shot with one of the humans' new UV bullets.

He shies away from her touch as she reaches out, touching the blood dripping from his ears. He stands suddenly, tiring of this conversation. There's only one person he should be discussing he and Pam's relationship with, what's left of it anyway, and it's not Nora.

"I'm going to ground," he states.

"What am I supposed to do? Pam said there's only two coffins down there."

"I assumed you'd find a rafter to hang upside down from, Nora."

He cracks his first smile in what seems like a decade at the look on her face, before striding from the office, pointing to a storeroom on his way to the door that leads to the basement. "There are travel coffins in there. Lock the door behind you."

He doesn't spare her another glance as he pulls open the door to their basement, turning on the top step to deadbolt the door behind him, knowing he won't truly get any rest today for worrying that something could happen, that the humans could come back.

He comes to stand between the two coffins, his sleek wooden one, her ridiculous pink one. His hand drags over the edge of hers, his fingers curling around the handle before he freezes.

How many times in the last hundred years had he done the same? More often than not, to crawl in beside her. Or if nothing else, to merely check on her, to assure himself that she was there, or simply just to watch her in her rest, to see her as no other is allowed to.

But now he wonders if he's lost the right to see her so intimately. Now, he wonders if he lifts the lid, if someone else, someone who doesn't love her like he does, _know _her like he does, who doesn't have her best interests at heart, may already be in there occupying the space that belongs to _him_.

He honestly doesn't know what he'll do if she isn't in there alone, but he knows it probably wouldn't turn out well for Tara.

Before he can give himself the chance to back down, he quickly lifts the lid, feeling ridiculous at the sigh of relief that leaves him when he finds just Pamela, alone, surrounded by the pink satin lining of her coffin. His heart clenches painfully seeing the blood dried on her cheeks, marring the porcelain whiteness of her skin with streaks of red.

How many nights had she cried herself to sleep because of him?

He leans in closer, resting his forearms on the rounded ledge of the coffin, tentatively reaching down to comb her hair back from her face, his fingers lingering in her freshly washed curls. His longing to touch her is almost unbearable. Hardly any time has passed since he last held her, the night he released her; but even still it feels as if it's been years since he felt her soft skin beneath his fingertips.

What he really wants is to climb in with her, to wrap himself around her, to rest beside her. He would rest better than he has in years.

But he knows he can't, just as well as he knows she probably doesn't want him anywhere near her. He needs to stay awake, for her safety. And he needs to stay away.

He released her to keep her safe. He pushed her away to keep her safe. And now all he does is hurt her, over and over again. Maybe letting her go is for the best.

He turns to walk away, figuring he'll spend the day in his office, watching and waiting. But he stops in his tracks, turning back to look at her. And before he can force himself to stop, he's crossing the room once again, climbing in beside her. She'll never know, he assures himself. He can leave before she wakes.

Gently, he moves her aside to make room for his large frame, before he gathers her against him, pulling her against his chest. His nose automatically buries itself in her hair, and he takes a deep breath, filling his senses with her familiar scent.

He loses track of time, not sure how long he lies there with her, lost in thought and worry. At some point, though, he realizes he's begun to speak out loud, murmuring his words into her hair.

"I am sorry, Pamela. So, so sorry," he whispers. "I don't know how we got so fucked up, but I know it's my fault." He's silent for a moment, his lips falling to press against her forehead, whispering even more softly, "I love you. I hope you know that. _You_ are what I'm most proud of."

"You've got a funny way of showing it," comes a small voice from below him.

He freezes momentarily, before he sighs, pulling her tighter against him. "How long have you been awake?"

"A few days," she mutters sarcastically, although she burrows further into his chest.

He snorts, and for a long moment he stays silent, unsure of what to say. "You should rest," he finally settles for.

"And miss you sneaking into people's coffins?"

"Sorry about that," he answers, "It seems I couldn't help myself."

"I don't mind," she says softly. "Especially if being asleep is the only way I can get you to talk to me anymore."

"I meant what I said," he murmurs.

"Then say it again when you know I can hear you."

He pulls her away enough to see her face, his eyes studying hers. "I don't know how we ended up this way."

"I do," she answers, one eyebrow arching high. "Shall I make you a list?"

He shakes his head slowly. "I'm sorry for everything I've put you through," he says quietly, "I love you, Pamela. More than anything."

"Like I said, you've got a funny way of showing it."

"Your safety is my number one priority—"

"Apparently my feelings come dead last," she interrupts, looking away.

Silence falls between them once again when he finds he's unable to argue. When he pulls her closer once again, he's almost surprised when she allows it, her arm wrapping around his broad chest as she snuggles against him.

A long time passes before she speaks, in barely a whisper. "I've missed you."

He sighs again, pressing his lips against her hair as he answers, "I've missed you too, prinsessa."

"Are we…" She trails off, and he hears her swallow before she tries again. "Are things ever going to be the same?"

"I don't think so," he answers immediately, his voice tinged with sadness. "So much has changed."

"You've changed," she retorts tersely.

"I have," he responds, his voice still soft, "But some things _haven't_ changed."

She tilts her head up, resting her chin on his chest as she meets his eyes, waiting for him to finish. When he doesn't elaborate, she rolls her eyes, turning her head to lay back down, but she gasps when his hand suddenly appears, gripping her chin between his fingers as he holds her in place.

Her eyes are wide as he studies her, his fingers slowly moving to wipe away the blood that trickles from her nose, pooling just above her full lips. She remains frozen as his thumb then traces over her lips, suppressing the need to shiver at such an intimate touch.

"So much has changed," he suddenly repeats, his voice hoarse as his eyes fall to her mouth, "But things have always changed in our lives, and it's never changed us before. You've always been there, waiting for me. And I've taken that for granted. I've taken so much for granted."

"You have," she agrees, never one to sugar coat things for his benefit.

"I know," he answers with a nod, "I know I have. But there is to be a war, Pamela. Bill, or whatever he is now, has to be defeated. I need you to be safe, no matter what the cost. But when it's finished, when we win…I need to know you will be waiting for me this time. I need to know that, Pam."

She smiles softly as she whispers, "I will be. I always will be."

"I don't deserve that," he murmurs sadly, "But I want it. I need it. I can't do this without you. And when it's all over…when all is said and done, one way or another we will fix this. I promise you, Pamela. Just give me one more chance to make things right."

"Okay," she answers breathlessly, and her eyes widen as he suddenly pulls her closer, tugging on her chin until he presses his lips against hers. She automatically melts into the kiss, their lips moving gently against each other. Her hand shakily rises to touch his cheek as the kiss deepens, a soft sigh escaping them both; finally, something that feels so right when everything has felt so wrong for far too long.

After a long moment they part, and they stare at each other in surprise for a long moment until Eric smiles, reaching out once again to dash away blood that drips this time from her ear. "You need to rest," he whispers, and for a moment she considers protesting, but her exhaustion is undeniable. She lets him pull her impossibly closer, her small body ending up halfway on top of his large frame as he tucks her head under his chin. Her hand stays in place against his cheek, her fingers gently stroking his rough, stubbly skin, assuring herself that he's actually there with her, that this isn't some cruel dream.

"I love you, Pamela," he murmurs suddenly, needing to say it, needing her to _hear_ it before she falls into her rest.

Unable to stop herself, she asks softly, hating the sound of the neediness in her voice, "Are you going to leave again?"

"No," he answers immediately, no longer having any intentions of slipping from her side before she wakes. Instead, he wants nothing more than to watch her eyes open, wishing more than anything he could experience once again her blood blossoming to life inside of him as he had every nightfall for a hundred years.

"You always leave," she whispers miserably.

"I won't," he whispers back, his arms tightening around her, "Not this time. We will win our battles, and then we will start anew. I swear it, Pamela."

She nods, feeling tears as they prick her eyes and slide down her cheeks, only then able to say those three words back to him that they hardly ever say, "I love you too."

He smiles softly in response, and soon feels her go slack in his arms as she finally allows the life to leave her body. He pulls her even closer, burying his nose in her hair, breathing in deeply its sweet, clean scent. Even though he doesn't plan to rest, he closes his eyes, relishing in the feeling of her weight on him, her scent surrounding him, her hair tickling his nose as her fingers still rest on his cheek. Too many times he's left her, left _this_, the only thing that truly matters. But never again. His arms tighten around her, hugging her close to him, and even though she can't hear him she whispers his final words once again.

"Not this time."

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**A/N: Reviews are appreciated, even if it's just to tell me I shouldn't have bothered posting this :) Until next time, my pretties.**


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